I got an email last week from someone asking why I never comment on anything negative about Disney. Frankly, I thought it was pretty obvious why both in that I am clearly a fan and in the fact that it’s my job to talk about all of  the fantastic things! That said, in the interest of being fair I figured I would jot down a list of the top 5 things I hate about Disney.

1) Total Immersion – From the time my family and I check in to our Disney resort until we are far enough down the road that we no longer see the purple road signs indicating we are on Disney property it’s like the rest of the world ceases to exist. There are no newspapers at our door, no CNN playing while we wait for a table, no sitting around watching the evening news. We go for an entire week without hearing about the economy or any other “uplifting news.” While we are occupying Main Street, we won’t hear anything about occupying Wall Street. Go a week without the news telling us how bad everything is and spend that week having fun and you just might start to feel happy and hopeful…and we all know how dangerous that can be! I hate Disney provides an idyllic environment for us during our stay; an environment where nothing matters except spending time having fun with our family.

2) Unnaturally clean – Have you ever noticed a startling lack of napkins, food wrappers, drink lids, receipts and other such items on the ground in the theme parks? Everywhere else that people gather in such large numbers you’ll find assorted debris on the ground leaving evidence of their activities. Not at Disney parks. Thanks to an abundance of trash cans strategically placed not more than 27 steps apart thanks to Walt Disney’s own meticulous research and cast members carrying “trash grabbers” to snatch up anything that finds its way to the ground between trash cans, the walkways at Disney theme parks are remarkably trash-free.  It’s freaky! This sets an unfair standards for other theme parks. When we go to a local amusement park even my 9-year-old son, whose room bears a shocking resemblance to the aftermath of a category 4 tornado say “this just isn’t Disney.” Haven’t they heard that it’s not fair to these other parks? I hate that in their attention to detail, even 40 years after the park opened Disney maintains the standard of a clean, happy environment for families that Walt Disney envisioned.

3) Customer service - Speaking of unfair to other amusement parks, can we talk about customer service for a minute? We live in a world where I scan my own groceries at the self-check-out. Where when I visit our local amusement park a “friendly” 16-year-old has to finish texting her BFF before she can ring up our lunch order. By contrast, at Disney World cast members are instructed not to point with one finger when asked where the closest bathroom is. They use two fingers because pointing can be seen as rude. They go out of their way to make sure that my family has a great experience every day of our vacation. A girl can get used to that, and I hate that it means that I may just forget to say “you’re welcome” to  self check out machine at Kroger when it thanks me for being a loyal customer!
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